there's almost no water. If you go aground
with an outboard, you can lift the motor up,
which is something you sure can't do with an
inboard. Can you imagine it getting dark and
beginning to blow, and there's a whiff of snow
in the air, and you're the only boat out there
-and you can't get home?"
"What do you do?" I asked.
"You sit and freeze until the tide lifts you
off the bar. Not for me, thanks just the same.
I'm getting too old for that kind of work."
We were scheduled to leave November 1,
so we couldn't go scalloping with the pro
fessionals, but I was determined to make an
Daydreams of bluefish and striped bass
hold surf casters to their sport as daylight
wanes. Nantucket offers vacationists a wide
range of pastimes: fishing, sailing, swim
ming, bicycling, or flying kites on the strong
sea winds. After sunset, only an occasional
beach fire will break the darkness along
this lonely shore near Smith Point.
amateur try. Off-season you are permitted to
collect a "family mess"-one bushel per fami
ly per week. You may use no dredges and no
boat, but must walk along looking at the bot
tom through a plastic box while gathering the
scallops with a rake or chicken-wire scoop.
Five of us went into Polpis Harbor one icy
day, clad in waders and armed with bizarre
paraphernalia. An inner tube attached to a
line at my waist supported a basket into which
I threw my scallops. I became so entranced
looking at the moving bottom that I waded
out too far and was rewarded with a cascade
of freezing water down my boots.
In an hour and a half, we gathered basket
on basket of spitting, snapping scallops
several gallons, I was sure.
Our total take, open and ready to eat,
proved humbling: slightly less than one pint.
"You can't pick up a trade in twenty min
utes," said Gibby when I told him of our
dismal failure. "Stick around. You'll learn."
Sea Still Provides a Bounty
To be on Nantucket is to want to stay, but
we had to get back to the mainland-to stop
lights, drive-ins and parking meters, elevators
and garbage disposals.
Departure day was crisp and sunny. With
a blast of its air horn, the little motorship Un
catena, whose sole cabin furnishings during
winter's stormier weather are airplane seats
bolted to the deck, slid away from the pier.
It was the first day of the scalloping season,
and the tiny boats bobbed and scuttled around
the harbor, somehow avoiding entangling
their dredges with their neighbors'. Wives
labored over the culling boards as husbands
manned the dredges.
Their contentment seemed unmarred.
There were no sailboats or water-skiers to
beware; no gift shop or carpentry work
awaited them; no summer housewife would
call to ask that her lawn be cut. They were
gathering their living from the sea, as their
forebears had done for 300 years.
They waved at us. We waved back. And
then we sailed to America.
THE END
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